While long before the title of tsar was first used by Ivan the Terrible, King Edward III (ruled 1327-1377) had a small amount of Russian blood, from the Grand Princes of Kiev. Back in the 1300s, Moscow was a small town deep in the Russian hinterland, and Slavic culture revolved around Kiev.

According to Saxo Grammaticus, two of Harold Godwinson's sons and a daughter escaped [the Norman invasion] to the court of their uncle, king Sweyn Estridsson of Denmark. The sons were treated by Sweyn with hospitality, while their sister was married to Waldemar, king of Ruthenia, i.e. Vladimir II Monomakh, one of the most famous rulers of Kievan Rus.

Anna is credited with bringing the name Philip to Western Europe. She imported this Greek name (Philippos, from philos (love) and hippos (horse), meaning "the one that loves horses") from her Eastern Orthodox culture.

Who is the only reigning monarch of England who is a direct ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II who is not included in Her Majesty’s senior line genealogy (since William the Conqueror) and why?

The obvious answer as to the why portion of the question is that he or she isn’t in the current queen’s senior line of descent from William I. I was looking for the reason why he or she was not yet could still have been king or queen of England.

The obvious answer as to the why portion of the question is that he or she isn’t in the current queen’s senior line of descent from William I. I was looking for the reason why he or she was not yet could still have been king or queen of England.

If I'm reading your question right, is it Henry VII, who was from a junior line of Edward III but married into the senior line?

Edward III's eldest son, Edward the Black Prince, had no grandchildren, meaning his line went extinct in 1400 with Richard II's death. The senior line from William the Conqueror to the present Royal Family goes through Edward III. The senior line from Edward III after the Princes in the Tower vanished goes like this:

Edward III (1312-1377)
Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence (1338-1368), second surviving son
Philippa, Countess of Ulster (1355-1382), only child
Roger Mortimer, Earl of March (1374-1398), son
Anne de Mortimer (1390-1411), daughter
Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York (1411-1460), son
Edward IV (1442-1483), son
Elizabeth of York (1466-1503), daughter, married Henry VII
Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots, on down to Elizabeth II

In comparison, Henry VII's descent from Edward III is through a younger son's child born illegitimate. John of Gaunt's eldest son was King Henry IV (himself not the most senior heir in 1399), but H4's line dies out in 1471, leaving this as John's senior line of descent.

Thus, Henry VII is a direct ancestor of Elizabeth II, but the senior line from William the Conqueror passes through his wife, Elizabeth of York instead. The reason H7 still became King was because he defeated and killed Richard III in battle and claimed the crown by right of conquest, marrying the senior heiress to tidy up his children's claims.

(And Elizabeth II herself is not the most senior living descendent of William the Conqueror; the senior line goes with the exiled Stuarts and is the Jacobite line.)

Not only did you read my question right, your answer is exactly correct. This was very much what (at least the pretext) the War of the Roses was about. You are indeed very well-versed in British history, apparently much more so than me.

Now that someone answered this, when I have time soon I shall post Henry VII as my favorite English monarch and tell the reason why on the appropriate thread.

Thank you again for not only answering, but also for having taken the time to explain the reasons why very thoroughly and accurately and saving me the trouble! I thought this was a fascinating bit of history which is why I posed the question here. I’m sure many will find your answer illuminating and historically interesting.

By the way, I wasn't aware there were any living descendents of James II. Who is the pretender today, please? Has the family ever officially renounced their claim?

Also, leaving aside the question of Henry Tudor’s line's (from John of Gaunt) right to the crown due to the circumstances you recounted, was Henry VII the rightful Lancastrian claimant to the throne if one accepts Henry IV’s usurpation as a fait accompli and therefore legitimate by the time of Henry VII? Were there any more senior members of the house extant by then?

[Thanks, I'm a genealogy fan. Henry VII is my favorite English monarch as well, due to the stability he gave England after the Wars.

The last Jacobite to press his claim was Bonnie Prince Charlie, Charles Edward Stuart, grandson of James II. His brother, a Catholic cardinal, never reclaimed or renounced his rights, and at his death the Jacobite line went to the King of Sardinia, a descendant of a daughter of Charles I. (The Hanovers were descended from a daughter of James I.) The line goes through the Sardinian and then Bavarian royal families, and the current "pretender" (though he makes no claim whatsoever) is Franz, Duke of Bavaria. There's a pretty in-depth website dedicated to (and from the point of view of) the Jacobites at The Jacobite Heritage .

If you go with the House of Lancaster, once Henry IV's line died out, the head of the house by senior descent was Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother who outlived her son by a few weeks. So Henry VII was the most senior male member of the house at the time.

In the British Forum we also have a Stuart Succession and Jacobite pretenders thread.
It's an amalgam of historical, genealogical and current material, taking the subject into the future with the young (but very tall!) Prince Josef Wenzel of Liechtenstein.

Thanks much for the additional information. I always wondered if indeed there were more senior male claimants still around from the House of Lancaster. It always somewhat amused me that Duke Richard of York’s argument (after he decided to actually contend for the crown as opposed to simply controlling his royal cousin’s person) seemed to boil down to: “See here! If anyone had the right to murder Richard II and usurp the throne, we did!” I’m reminded of a line from Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy spoken by the Vogon captain: “It’s far too late to be making a fuss about it now!”

The Lancastrian claim to the throne seems to me to have been at least as valid as that of the family’s illustrious founder at Hastings. Are we to scour genealogical charts now to see if any of Harold’s descendents are still around? No matter. The ever sagacious and pragmatic Henry Tudor rendered the point moot with diplomatic flair.

In regard to the Stuarts, I had thought there were no direct decedents of James II still around. I was aware of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s escapades, but my memory went fuzzy after him. It didn’t occur to me that James II had a sister who might have had heirs. James’s family was excluded from the throne due to religion, but why were hers? Since she was the daughter of Charles I, I assume she was raised Protestant like Charles II and James himself, before his conversion to the old religion of his mother. Was it the same with his sister and thus her line’s exclusion as well after the death of Queen Anne?

In the British Forum we also have a Stuart Succession and Jacobite pretenders thread.
It's an amalgam of historical, genealogical and current material, taking the subject into the future with the young (but very tall!) Prince Josef Wenzel of Liechtenstein.

Warren,

Thank you for the reference on your forum to the Stuarts. Obviously, I need to brush up on their line after the “Glorious Revolution.” (You strike me as an astute man. Therefore, by my insertion of what are usually referred to as “sarcastic quotes," you might surmise I am Catholic. But there’s no point in holding a grudge, especially one woefully anachronistic. And, alas, I must confess that the hapless James II, my co-religionist of yore, was perhaps more than just a tad a, er, “jerk.” He doubtlessly did us irrevocable harm. That’s the problem with converts to any faith. They tend to overdo matters. I’d be foolish to deny it.)

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for this splendid forum and to compliment you on being the most attentive administrator or moderator I’ve yet encountered on any forum. Your apparently prompt reading of all notes and your penchant for reassigning posts to the most appropriate threads (especially those made by neophytes such as me) is most impressive and facilitates an orderly and most readable forum. You apparently even intervene to fix carelessly presented ones.

... It didn’t occur to me that James II had a sister who might have had heirs..

The link between Charles I and the modern Jacobite line is his youngest daughter, Henrietta Anne. She was born in 1644, once the Civil War had begun, and only saw the father off-and-on during the last five years before he was beheaded. WHen she was four and a half, she was smuggled out of England after the execution to join her mother at the deeply Catholic court of Louis XIV.

Henrietta Anne married Philippe, Duke of Orleans (Monsieur), Louis' younger brother, and her children were raised up Catholic, a line that continues to this day. Sadly, she only lived to 26 (peritonitis).

Thanks, very much, Dralcoffin. Not only did you provide the extant Stuart genealogy down to the present Duke Franz, you even have the future noted should the good Duke not prove a late bloomer and “do a Tony Randall” and astonish his family.

You are certainly a walking encyclopedia of royal lineages, and such is appreciated!

This is always a fascinating topic, though a minfield. The legitimatists always amuse me; they come from families that acknowledge salic law and morganatic marriage, yet are happy to be "claimants" through female lines to the Stuart inheritance. Isn't it a fact that there are legitimate dynasts (should they wish to claim it) descended from Charles I Stuart ancestors who have long been British subjects. This is all academic as the Act of Settlement is to all intents and purpose part of the constitution of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Yes, there are many descendants of the last English king, Harold Godwinson in Britain and the Commonwealth.

The Jacobite "claim" amuses me too. I wonder what Duke Franz's reaction to someone calling him Majesty is: a laugh or a smile?

Here's another line-of-descent question: By World War I, who was the heir by absolute seniority (regardless of gender) of George III? Or in other words, if the British law was changed in George III's reign to first-born or line from the eldest child succession, who would be the "claimant"? Assume all marriages and births occured as in reality. (Hint: )

Actually, the change may not have made a difference. The first three children of George III had children who predeceased them. George IV had one daughter, Charlotte, who died in childbirth. Frederick, Duke of York did not have any legitimate children. William IV had two daughters who died in infancy.

The next child of George III would have been Charlotte, the Princess Royal. She married Duke Frederick of Württemberg but her only child was stillborn. Charlotte died in 1828, well before her brother William IV, so she never would have ascended the throne even with absolute seniority.

The next child of George III would have been Edward, Duke of Kent, who was the father of Victoria.

What I was aiming for was Victoria's eldest child's eldest child: Kaiser Wilhelm II. When I was figuring out the relationships of WWI's monarchs to each other, I was surprised to find out Wilhelm was Victoria's oldest grandchild.

From Wikipedia, which cites Giles St. Aubyn's Queen Victoria:

Quote:

A typical example of this was his "love-hate" relationship with the United Kingdom and in particular with his British cousins. He returned to England in January 1901 to be at the bedside of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and was holding her in his arms at the moment of her death. Open armed conflict with Britain was never what Wilhelm had in mind—"a most unimaginable thing", as he once quipped—yet he often gave in to the generally anti-British sentiments within the upper echelons of the German government, conforming as they did to his own prejudices toward Britain which arose from his youth.

(Going by eldest child descent, from Sophia, Electress of Hanover, the most-senior "heir" by WWI is the King of Württemburg, descended from George III's elder sister.)

If we take it that King of England, Scotland, and Ireland is a British title then those continental legitimatist who were allied to the German and Austro-Hungarian cause during the Great War, and were legally deprived of their British titles by Parliament have forever been excluded from the succession; even if the constitution is changed to allow Roman Catholics equal dynastic rights. Simples!

This is an illusion Queen Elizabeth doesn't have enough blue blood in her veins William or Harry must do something to correct that People will say what kind of royals are these?

The Queen mightn't but don't forget Philip whose lineage is scattered with royal blood that isn't in the Queen's lineage e.g. I believe he is descended from Charlemagne but the Queen isn't. Through Philip Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward are actually full of more royal blood than their mother. Of course that has been watered down again with their marriages.